Posted on 06/20/2015 8:29:02 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
A quasi-religious movement now has a genuinely religious leader.
The pope’s encyclical on the environment is being hailed for its embrace of science, although it is about as scientific as the Catholic hymnal.
Pope Francis writes that Sister Earth “now cries out because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her.” Really? Is that what the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says?
I’m not Catholic, but I respect the pope’s humility and am moved by his love for the handicapped and his concern for the vulnerable. The Catholic Church is one of the pillars of Western civilization, and it has brought comfort and meaning to the lives of countless millions of people down through the millennia.
That doesn’t mean that climate science, economic policy, cost-benefit analysis are its core competencies. No one has ever said: Yes, but what did Gregory VII do to fight the onset of the Medieval Warm Period?
The pope’s at times lyrical encyclical draws on a beautiful tradition of respect for nature and its creatures represented by the pope’s namesake, St. Francis of Assisi, and is suffused with an intense regard for the poor. But anyone who takes the encyclical as a serious guide to public policy deserves a stern talking to from the nearest tough-minded, ruler-wielding nun.
All that matters to the media, though, is that Pope Francis has taken a simplistic apocalyptic climate alarmism and given it the imprimatur of the Vatican. The same people who are unwilling to give the pope the time of day on more central moral matters, like the dignity of life, are now attributing to him an authority that might have made Pope Innocent III, who challenged kings, blush.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter because only the climate-change passages will get much play, but the document could have benefited from an editor cutting out the bizarre ramblings.
The pope writes of “harmful habits of consumption,” including “the increasing use and power of air conditioning.” This apparently is the result of an insidious capitalistic dynamic: “The markets, which immediately benefit from sales, stimulate ever greater demand. An outsider looking at our world would be amazed at such behavior, which at times appears self-destructive.”
That’s assuming the outsider lives in a very cool climate, or doesn’t mind sweating. Anyone not so lucky probably thinks the inventor of air conditioning should be canonized. In France about 10 years ago, roughly 15,000 mostly elderly people died during a heat wave, in part because they lacked the aforementioned wasteful air conditioning.
The pope is also skeptical of automobiles, which are, after all, a suspiciously recent innovation: “Many cars, used by one or more people, circulate in cities, causing traffic congestion, raising the level of pollution, and consuming enormous quantities of nonrenewable energy. This makes it necessary to build more roads and parking areas which spoil the urban landscape.”
If saving the planet, or our souls, depends on giving up air conditioning or cars, we are all indeed on the road to perdition. The pope at one point favorably cites the example of the desert monks. But while living a life of contemplation in the middle of nowhere suited St. Anthony of Egypt just fine — he is reputed to have lived to 105 — most of us aren’t spiritual superheroes, nor does monasticism as a general matter tell us anything useful about improving the lives of the poor.
While the pope pays lip service to technological advances, he doesn’t truly appreciate their wonders. The Industrial Revolution was one of the greatest boons to humankind. Consider the unrelieved misery — the disease, the poverty, the illiteracy — before around 1800, when if you weren’t an aristocrat, a general, or a bishop, your life was probably nasty, brutish and short. Mass industrialization launched the world on a radically different material trajectory.
“The average person in the world of 1800 was no better off than the average person of 100,000 B.C.,” Gregory Clark writes in his book, “A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World.” “Life expectancy was no higher in 1800 than for hunter-gatherers: 30 to 35 years. Stature, a measure both of the quality of diet and of children’s exposure to disease, was higher in the Stone Age than in 1800.”
But at least when everyone died at a much earlier age, we weren’t engaging in the ravages of the planet that so exercise Francis. This sinful assault on the Earth, by the way, largely consisted in taking otherwise completely useless glop from the ground and using it to power economic and technical advances that enriched average people beyond anyone’s imagining. This is obviously a secular miracle of the highest order, although the religiously inclined might think: Thank God for fossil fuels, and above all, for the human ingenuity that figured out what to do with them.
And the bounty hasn’t ended. Something like a billion people have been lifted out of poverty in places like India and China in recent decades as they have embraced markets and global trade. The pope should be delighted, except he has a blinkered view of capitalism as a zero-sum game benefiting only the privileged.
In this vein, he writes of the “ecological debt” that exists “between the global north and south.” Well, if we are going to speak of debts, the global north gave the global south the modern world. (You’re welcome.) The best thing that can happen to the developing world now is that it can follow our example of growth driven in part by cheap energy. It will enrich them, uplift their poor, give them more wherewithal to adapt to future changes in the climate, and — over time, one hopes — foster forms of government that are accountable to their people and respect their rights.
For all that the pope portrays modern development as a long exercise in environmental devastation, it is the advanced countries that have the cleanest water and air, and are best prepared to adapt their way around any far-off environmental challenges. The pope is right to be skeptical of a blind-faith in technological fixes. Of course they can’t cure what ails the human soul; they can solve seemingly insuperable problems. Perhaps Francis should put a visit to the dikes of Holland on his next itinerary.
His encyclical will be portrayed as the best thing the Church has done since Pope Leo dissuaded Attila from sacking Rome, but on climate change, it merely bends to the fashions of the hour.
The Pope is smarter than God, evidently.
Honestly, staying out of the weeds, he could support global warming/Gaia philosophy and not look like he was a kook.
Now, the pope is a kook.
The Catholic Church has been dead for a couple of centuries. The only exception was Pope John who helped Reagan defeat the Soviet Union.
This fraud of a pope just put the last nails in its coffin.
L
This pope is a very worldly guy.
Lefties now have to pretend to like the Pope? That’s pretty funny.
This is a demonstration of how thoroughly society has been undermined by progressivist thinking. The fundamental transformation took place back in the 19th century and we’re finally seeing the more resistant portions of society wicking up the poison.
Well, he is Argentinian.
PFL
The Rock star pope strikes again. His half-brained comments must be related to his half lung capacity, the brain is starved for oxygen. Seriously, he has no clue what he is talking about.
The Pope is apparently a Socialist first and Pope second, a far second. I fear he will rip out the heart of my church.
>> Lefties now have to pretend to like the Pope? That’s pretty funny.
Yup.
Fear confirmed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OUT0gaUksU
A Pre Tribute ....to Frankies Diatribe...By Todd Bluelight Tundrgren
sounds a bit like frank zappa...but without the sense of humor////
I just found this interesting vid. Worth a watch if I can post it correctly.
http://m.youtube.com/?#/watch?v=VVt9K_Kv4MM
Surprising from Politico. Guess they don’t want the Caholic Church ‘encroaching’ on their liberal progressive pseudo-scientific turf.
I can see from other blogs with liberal contacts that I know personally that they are suddenly ecstatic about the Pope. Next he need only congratulate the SCOTUS for legalizing perversion and he will be their hero. He’s close to that now.
Ugly times are getting uglier.
Rich Lowry.
> “The only exception was Pope John who helped Reagan defeat the Soviet Union.”
Yes, that’s true except it was Pope John Paul II.
The Holy Spirit is screaming save your soul and come out of her before it’s too late!
Behold, I will throw her on a bed of sickness
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